


Something in the Bone

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, consensual but calculated, nobody in this story is a good person, spoilers through AC:Odyssey chapter 3, why can I never write nice things when I get into a new fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 21:39:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21483259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: Alexios wanted to loosen Elpenor's tongue; Elpenor did not want for wealth, nor for security, but he could not more obviously have wanted Alexios.
Relationships: Alexios/Elpenor (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	Something in the Bone

The first time Alexios ever met Elpenor, the conversation had been all wariness on his side and condescension on the other's. He'd come to recognise it much later as the petty, performative mysteriousness of a man thirsty for power who had only ever had a little of it; who had found himself in possession of one, single, genuinely important secret, had enough brains not to reveal it, and yet _ could not resist _making an elaborate pantomime of having it.

His dead face, when Alexios had turned the body over, had looked ludicrously, naively surprised.

At that first meeting he'd played aloof and mysterious, lacing his speech with anvil-subtle hints about his secret cause and powerful friends, and he might have done a more convincing job of it if he'd been able to keep his calculating eyes on Alexios' face.

His gaze had skittered over Alexios' body like insects, as transparently hungry as his words were loftily obscure. 

Everyone had a weak point. He'd learned that early. You hit a shark in the eye, and you hit an enemy in their fear or their purse - or their bed. It was a formula. Alexios wanted to loosen Elpenor's tongue; Elpenor did not want for wealth, nor for security, but he could not more obviously have wanted Alexios.

Alexios was no _ hetaera; _their profession required an attunement to social graces and a well of studied patience, both of which he lacked. But he'd spent his youth honing his body and breaking his back in service of people who saw him either as a means to an end or as the answer to their prayers, which was arguably worse, and from that angle seducing Elpenor was nothing he hadn't done before.

In the end it barely merited the word seduction. Elpenor wanted so much to believe he was important, central, a powerful man clothed in the irresistibility of that power. All Alexios did was play along.

*

He'd folded his arms, made his voice uncertain. "I need to know more. Before I kill for you."

Elpenor had looked taken aback for a moment, as if Alexios was an actor who had gone off script, but recovered. "That inquiring mind again. No, Alexios; if you wish to learn more, prove your mettle first."

"Not about the target. Or your schemes. About you." A shrug. Elpenor's gaze lingered on his shoulders. "I like to know what kind of man I'm working for."

A wealthy man, canny with his business interests, it turned out. Not a politician - Elpenor waved that away in disgust - but a man who politicians listened to. A patron of the arts, a connoisseur of theatre and sculpture and good wine, an amphora of which he called his servant to produce, and then sent him away. 

Some way down the amphora of wine he'd put his hand on Alexios' thigh. Half a cup after that, had run his thumb over Alexios' bottom lip. So it went.

Elpenor wanted to touch him. His hands crawled over Alexios' body much like his eyes had, loitering over his collarbones and pectorals and the deep groove over the hip; lingering over his nipples and the silvery trails of long-healed wounds. He traced the length of Alexios' cock with one finger, assessingly, and then did not touch it again.

The look in his eyes might have passed for honest, if drunken, lust in another light. Alexios had lived in the world long enough to recognise it instead as the familiar narrow-eyed desire of a man looking at something he was not content _ just _to marvel at but wanted to possess. Nor was he the first nobleman to take a close, faintly distasteful interest in Alexios' scars.

He fucked Alexios too roughly for the amount he'd used of his expensive oil; hungrily, fingers digging into hips as if trying to put his thumbprint to an unfired vase. 

Alexios closed his eyes and tried to remember the face of the last man he bedded. A sailor. It'd been too long. 

*

Afterward, Alexios cleaned himself up, and began to dress. His braids had started to work loose from the band that held them back; he shook it all out and tied it again.

Elpenor watched from where he reclined on the bed, winecup in hand. The lamplight cast the room in shades of copper; Alexios' shadow fell long against the opposite wall.

For a minute or so Elpenor seemed lost in thought, and Alexios made no attempt to address it. He could think of a number of things he wanted to say to the man, only some of which involved anything as civil as words, but held his peace.

"I knew you were worth my attention. I had not realised you were -" an aimless gesture "- this."

"I'm young and strong," Alexios said, without turning to look at him properly. "Plenty of men are that."

"No. There's something else about you." Elpenor's tone was animated now, by drink or something else. "Something in the bone."

That made Alexios stop, and turn, still three-quarters naked. He made his tone dismissive as he turned his tunic the right way out. "So I have good bone structure. You can find that all over Greece."

"You know that's not what I meant." Elpenor finished another cup, seemed to catch or recollect himself, and set it down on the side table a little too hard. "It shines from your eyes. _ Kharisma. _I should commission a statue of you, for a temple. This -" he waved one hand, gesture and gaze taking in the length of Alexios' lamplit torso "- this is what people should see when they go to petition Ares."

"That sounds like _ hybris _," Alexios said, not wholly joking. 

Elpenor smiled tightly at that, and "If the gods punish _ hybris _outside of plays, I have never seen it. And I have seen some - people - reach very high."

More than that he would not say, and Alexios left the following morning with the sun, on his way to commit a murder.

He reflected as he walked away from the little house that he'd perhaps underestimated the man. Elpenor had enough sense - or fear of retribution - it seemed, not to spill his precious mysteries after a little too much wine and a fuck. Alexios could see the outline of it, though, the shape of the secret that would fit into such a man's mind, and thought he knew where to push the next time Elpenor's guard was down; and that would come easier next time.

In the event, the next time Alexios met Elpenor ended with him stashing the body out of the way, but by that point he had already decided that Elpenor wasn't important. He had other ghosts he needed to pursue.

*

In the deep cave under the Sanctuary of Apollo, with its black water and bronze shadows, the Cult of Kosmos went silent at the approach of Deimos.

Elpenor's head fell into the silence with a wet thud, and rolled onto its side.

It was like a compass pointing towards a lodestone, the way every single set of masked eyes followed the head. They looked at it, and then they looked at one another, and Alexios could almost see the silent coils of paranoia uncurl between them. Good. Let them fear.

"Elpenor is dead," Alexios said pleasantly, and dusted off his hands. "One of you is a traitor."

Elpenor had wanted to give him a temple. Catch his face in marble, as an imitation of a god. He had always thought too small. 

The robes and masks shrank back as he walked between them. He heard them whispering the name, his name, as they tried to avoid his eyes. 

_ Deimos, _ Terror, son of Ares, god of war.


End file.
